Semiconductor chip manufacturing industry plays a pivotal role in the national economy, the scale of related enterprises is also increasing, its power supply and distribution system stability, reliable operation and maintenance is not only the basic guarantee of its safe production, but also related to product quality and smooth production.

• The integrated circuit chip manufacturing industry belongs to the precision manufacturing industry with high capital and technology intensity, and its production has significant characteristics, and the production process requires high environmental cleanliness and strict requirements for temperature and humidity.
• Large-scale use of electronic devices and integrated circuits in the production process and a relatively high degree of automation.
• There are many key equipment for integrated circuit chip manufacturing, many workstation appliances, and many complex process steps. In addition to the power supply and distribution system, the transmission system, ultrapure water purification system, vacuum system, air-cooled air cooling system, and special gas distribution system are also required to ensure the smooth implementation of the production process and the safe operation of key equipment.

Since the production conditions of the entire plant are ultimately realized by the supply of electrical energy, semiconductor chip manufacturing requires very high quality of power supply.

Power quality problems in semiconductor chip manufacturing and production

1. Harmonic problems

IC test bench, PLC-controlled manipulator, chip manufacturing circular machine, or frequency conversion control semiconductor machine will produce a large number of harmonics, they will not only cause the machine equipment itself to break the phenomenon, the harmonic current flowing back into the power grid will also cause other circuits to heat, electronic switch malfunction, power supply voltage instability, and even cause production line stoppage, semi-finished products scrapped.

2. Voltage dips and interruptions

Semiconductor manufacturing equipment is very expensive, many equipment worth up to millions of dollars, very sensitive to power supply voltage fluctuations, millisecond voltage fluctuations, enough to make the semiconductor factory process equipment shutdown to interrupt production, resulting in huge economic losses. And there are many steps in the chip manufacturing process, and the conventional dynamic storage memory processing process requires more than 200 processes, and any mistake in any step will directly affect the qualification rate of the product, making the expensive chip worthless.

Voltage fluctuation-sensitive types of semiconductor process equipment (almost all types of semiconductor equipment): etching equipment (dry and wet engraving), membrane diffusion precipitation equipment (chemical vapor phase precipitation and physical vapor phase precipitation), heating equipment, surface treatment and cleaning equipment, lithography equipment (step lithography machine and orbital lithography machine, scanning lithography machine), chemical mechanical polishing equipment, ion implantation equipment, measurement equipment, automatic test equipment, etc.

The Economic Regulation and Operation Bureau of the National Development and Reform Commission has commissioned the Asian Power Quality Industry Alliance to carry out a power quality economic impact survey, and after a large number of investigations and analysis, it shows that voltage sag and short-term interruption are very significant power quality problems, and the semiconductor industry has huge production losses due to power quality disturbance.

Voltage sag and interruptions shut down semiconductor production equipment, resulting in direct and indirect losses including:

• Direct losses: damage and waste of semiconductor silicon wafers, shortened or even damaged equipment life, labor costs for cleaning up production lines, etc.
• Indirect losses: time required to restart production lines, reduced product quality, delayed delivery times, etc.

The economic loss caused by each shutdown is calculated in hundreds of thousands, millions or even tens of millions in the semiconductor industry, so the voltage sag problem has become a very important power quality problem affecting semiconductor manufacturing plants, and it is of great practical significance to strengthen the monitoring, analysis and governance of voltage sag and other voltage events.

Solution

The voltage sag problem has brought serious harm to the semiconductor industry, for this reason, Bowo provides a complete set of solutions, as follows:

Application case

1. Application of BW-DVR in a large semiconductor manufacturer in Chengdu

2. Application of BW-APF in Xi'an Xiyiswei silicon wafer project